in the dark I hear your voice
by alanabloom
Summary: "I know you aren't real. I...I'm not crazy." / "Methinks the lady doth protest too much," Alex replies with a smirk. "But I hope you're right, Pipes. I love you, but I'm not moving this show to Psych." REPOST.


**A/N: **Goes non-canon somewhere just before 2x10 - Piper's back from furlough, doesn't know about Larry and Polly, hasn't read Alex's letters yet, etc. Also, **trigger warning for brief mentions of suicidal thoughts.**

(Reposting this, got taken down for cursing in the summary. 'Tis what I get for blindly agreeing to guidelines)

* * *

"Piper. Listen."

Nicky has her serious face on and she keeps calling you by your first name.

"Y'know Morello drove Miss Rosa over to the hospital earlier. So she has to sit in the van for hours during the chemo, so Ford decided to be halfway decent and leave her his newspaper. There was a whole thing about this body they found in Queens..."

You're wondering what any of this has to do with you, and then Nicky says Alex's name.

You start to hum. Not a tune, just one long, low note. It makes you sound crazy, but it's better than listening to what she's telling you.

The first stupid thing you say is, "No. I would know."

Nicky reaches into her pocket, pulls out a badly torn piece of newspaper. She tries to hand it over, but you won't take it.

The second stupid thing you say is, "Fuck you."

Then you're up and out of the chapel, where Nicky had practically dragged you to talk, and you don't stop moving for anything, just walk straight outside and onto the track. No jogging. You _run_, run and run and run until your muscles are screaming loud enough to drown out everything else.

For the rest of the day you become your mother, refusing to acknowledge bad news. You sew up the slice Nicky's words made in your chest and carry on like the wound doesn't exist. Nothing you can see or hear or touch has changed. Litchfield is the same, and Alex is no more gone today than she was yesterday, and the day before, and back and back and back since you returned from Chicago without her.

* * *

The newspaper article is waiting under your pillow, and there's no way to get rid of it fast enough. You've already seen the word **homicide** pulsing in the headline.

When it happens, it's fast: the most brutal ripping off of a Band-Aid that takes all your protective layers with it, leaving you raw and trembling. Without consent, your eyes focus on the words.

**Detectives say woman, 34, likely killed in drug related homicide.**

Your heart tumbles through your chest like a heavy, spiky thing, splintering a few ribs and piercing a lung on the way.

_Alex Vause, 34, was found dead on March 5 in her Queens, New York apartment. _

The sentences following that one have been blacked out with a bold, dark Sharpie. Someone made sure you'd see no details about what happened, but all of a sudden you're remembering way too much.

_Revenge is part of his business model._

What the fuck did you do, Alex?

_deep_

what the fuck

_sick_

did you do?

_revenge_.

A low, primal sound curls its way out of your throat, and you spend the last ounce of control you have on stuffing the sleeve of your hoodie deep into your mouth. Then you scream and scream and scream until your throat feel like it's ripping open, until the sound collapses into bits and the tears finally come.

* * *

Red finds you curled in a ball on your bed, facing the wall and crying yourself sick.

"Oh, honey." Her voice is low and warm and the gentlest you've ever heard her. Nicky or Lorna must have told her. She pats you twice on the shoulder but then leaves you alone.

You haven't thought the words yet. Not together, anyway, and not in order. They're rattling around in your chest along with the few words you'd managed to pull from the newspaper's page: _ mistrial_ _Alex_ _homicide deal Litchfield Queens drugs released dead dead dead dead_.

"Chapman." Red again, her words still soft around the edges. "They're doing check."

The words in your chest are too heavy. Your body feels like it's made of lead, and you don't even try to move, just shuffle closer to the wall of the bunk and press your forehead against the cool plaster. Then Red's tugging you upright and to your feet. You are pliable and weightless; you let her lead you outside the cube.

Your eyes are red and swollen into slits, and your knuckles are bloody even though you can't remember why. People are looking at you, but you just stare vacantly forward and, for the first time, think the words:

_Alex is dead_.

O'Neill walks by, followed by Bell, both of them click click clicking the nightly count.

_Alex is dead_.

Nicky says your name and takes a step toward you, but you retreat into the cube and burrow back into your bunk.

_Alex is dead_.

The lights dim, the dormitory pitching into prison's version of dark.

_Alex is dead_.

And then you remember the letters.

* * *

_DEAR PIPES,_

The nickname is a fist closing around your throat, and so is the familiar, all caps scrawl of her handwriting.

You're holding the most recent letter and you're scared. Because the thing you're trying not to think about is that you've been mad at her. _Furious_. You've been thinking of her out in the world enjoying her freedom while you rot for something _she_ pulled you into, except now she's dead and none of it makes sense.

You start to read, and your insides seize up by the end of the first paragraph.

_I know that the situation in Chicago seems fucked, but I promise I was protecting_ _you_.

(deep. sick. revenge.)

So why the fuck didn't she protect herself?

Even though you get the sense that every letter in that thick stack holds pretty much the same explanation, the same entreaty to call her, the same need to speak face to face (_too late now fuck fuck fuck_ _fuck_), you don't open the others.

You read the single letter again and again until it hurts your eyes. You don't sleep.

* * *

"Here's the thing. I need to go to the funeral."

The relieved look Nicky had when you showed up for work (half an hour late, with no shower or breakfast, but still showed up) falls away instantly.

"Uh, Chapman, I don't think that even _you_ can pull off getting furlough - a _second_ furlough - for your ex-girlfriend's funeral."

"You don't understand." Your voice is vibrating with urgency, as though Nicky is somehow the person in charge of all this. "I _have_ to go...do you know when it is?"

"You read the same article as I did." Not true. Nicky had read the unedited version, the one with details she'd felt the need to cover them up (_deepsickrevenge_). "It wasn't an obituary. Besides," Nicky hesitates. "You sure there will even be a funeral?"

Offended on Alex's behalf, you bristle, "_Yes_. She has an aunt. And a few cousins. And _friends._ " You think. Or at least: "People sent her stuff when she was here. She had visitors."

"Okay, sorry. But think about it, Chapman. It's either already happened, or it's tomorrow. Sorry, kid."

The name, in the wrong voice, clatters in your ears, and you grimace. "But you don't understand." The words are desperate and thin. "I missed her mother's funeral. She was so mad about that. I can't do it again."

"I think you get a pass this time."

You walk out. Luschek's not even paying attention, but Nicky still tries to follow and remind you they'll put you in SHU if you skip work, but you can't bring yourself to care.

* * *

It's hard, grieving like this, when you haven't lost anything tangible, when your life is churning on unaffected and all the cracks are on the inside.

They're only words - Nicky's, the newspaper's. It doesn't feel real yet. You keep trying to pretend, to force yourself to forget for an hour, or twenty minutes, or five, or thirty seconds. It doesn't work. So you lie on your bed and try not to feel or think or remember anything.

* * *

"Alright, up and at 'em, electrical work waits for no one."

"I'm not going."

"Yeah, cause getting thrown in the SHU is _really_ going to cheer you up right now."

"I don't care."

(What Nicky doesn't understand is that you deserve to be punished.)

"Tough shit, I do. It ain't even about you, Chapman. I consider keeping you out of seg my way of paying respects to Vause."

"What the hell does that mean?"

"You didn't see her when you were locked up for Pennsatucky. Fuckin' on _edge_."

_(It means I'm not holding grudges today.)_

_(I'm happy to see you.)_

"Please don't talk about it."

"Fine. Just get your ass up, yeah?"

* * *

In the bathroom later, you accidentally catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror. Your eyes look like twin bruises.

* * *

They call you for visitation the next day. You aren't expecting anyone, and you don't know who you're hoping for when you drag yourself down to the visitation room.

It's Larry. Awkward and grim faced and visibly startled when his eyes land on you.

"Jesus," he breathes out, involuntary. "Pipes..."

He goes for a hug but you sit down before he gets close.

"I was, um..." Larry lowers himself into his seat and reaches into his pocket. He's got a newspaper clipping. Carefully cut out this time, with neat, even corners. Somehow the idea of Larry sitting at the kitchen table, meticulously clipping out this article with your red scissors, makes you sick. "I thought someone should, uh, tell you. But..." He swallows. He's having trouble looking you in the eye for longer than a few seconds. "You seem to...already know?"

If he's waiting for confirmation you don't give it to him. You're halfway out of your seat already. "Is that it?"

"No, wait a second, Pipes. Just..." He sighs, like it costs him a lot to ask: "Are you okay?'

You don't answer, can't even look at him. There are no Sharpie marks on the article he's holding, and you don't know if you're more terrified or desperate to know what Nicky was hiding.

"I told my dad," Larry says, because he has an ingrained need to fill silences. "If it makes you feel better, he felt pretty stupid. For, y'know, telling you there was no reason to worry about telling the truth."

For the first time, your eyes snap to his. "Thank you, Larry." The words are dry as sawdust, each syllable tinged with the barest drop of venom. "That _does_ make me feel better. Someone I love is _dead. _But at least I get to give your father a big fat _I told you so_. I fucking feel so much fucking better."

Your voice splinters in half, and you launch to your feet and leave the room just before you start crying. You forget about Larry's carefully trimmed newspaper, forget about deciding whether you want to see it, because he doesn't get to witness this. Maybe it'd sting, or maybe he's secretly thinking this is the ending you and Alex deserve, but either way your pain isn't for him.

* * *

In the floor of your cube you hold the thick stack of letters but don't read anything new. You aren't ready to have nothing left waiting from her.

So you pull out the latest letter, the only one you read, and trace your fingers over the words you inadvertently committed to memory. It's a long time before something occurs to you.

It's a photocopy. Most of your letters are, after they've been handled and occasionally edited by the prison staff, and you've long since stopped caring about them reading every word you receive, but this is different.

This letter is a photocopy. It isn't something she touched.

You start pulling the other pages from their ripped envelopes, increasingly frantic, not letting your eyes linger on the words, simply checking. All copies. All one degree removed from Alex's hands.

For the first time since you came back from Chicago _(came back without her) _you wonder what happened to her stuff.

* * *

You stalk through the dormitories, eyes roving carefully over each cube, the same way you collected your things when you first got back. There isn't much to look for, but you know her books, at least, and the few photographs she'd had on the bunk walls. Panic is a balloon stuck between your lungs, inflating a little more with every search that turns up nothing, making it harder and harder to breathe.

When it's threatening to burst, you go to her old cube. Leanne's stretched on the bed, reading, and she eyes you warily and clutches the book protectively to her chest, but it's not Alex's so you don't care. You don't know who has the side of the bunk Alex used to occupy, but it's empty right now, and you start pawing through their stuff.

"What the hell do you think _you're_ doing?" Leanne demands.

Your hands are wild, rummaging in the metal cabinets, and on top of them, knocking books and nail polish and boxes of crackers onto the floor without care. Behind you, Leanne makes a snorting sound. "Braverman's gonna be _maaaaaad_." You ignore her; you're half out of your head now, _everything_ - all the hurt and anger and stealthy, creeping guilt - coming to a dizzying peak between your eyes.

You stumble over to Leanne's side and start hurling things off the cabinet top.

"Hey, don't _touch_ that!"

"Where the fuck is her stuff, what did you do with it, where the _fuck is it_?" The words are loud and shrill, the syllables tripping over each other in their rush to get out.

Leanne's hand closes around your arm, and you send her careening to the floor.

(You must be in the anger stage of mourning, the one that's all talons and claws. Or maybe it's bargaining: convincing yourself you'll feel better if you can only have something of hers to hold onto. This is what they don't tell you about the so-called stages: they aren't a checklist, a step by step guide. They bump into each other, overlap, until _denial and anger and bargaining and depression_ are all tangled together in one huge fucked up knot.)

* * *

You used to tell yourself being with Alex was a form of osmosis, that you'd taken in bits of her recklessness, her wildness, and sewn them to your skin - then shed them again when you left.

But that isn't it at all. Alex had only drawn something out of you that was always there. After you left her, it was dormant for years, but always lurking. Prison had tapped into it again. It's the same wildness that had spilled over when you attacked Pennsatucky.

And now it's got a grip on you again, as you throw Leanne's shit against the wall, screaming demands for Alex's things, until the COs run over and drag you to the SHU.

* * *

This time, the now familiar sight of seg provokes something almost like relief.

It's dropping all pretenses of normalcy, of life carrying on: they've locked you in a box, just you and your grief, left to fight it out.

(The grief will win, of course. It wallops you every round, and you're half convinced it's what's going to kill you.)

You don't even attempt to keep track of time. No more counting meals or showers, and you're pretty sure you sleep more than just nights. Most of the time you just _sit_, your brain all black static surrounding diminished senses. Other than the CO who comes once a day to supervise showers, there's no proof that you're a real, living person.

(You tell yourself that makes it better. That it's easier living in a world where Alex doesn't exist when you barely exist yourself.)

* * *

You become convinced there are whispers, floating through the vents or underneath the cracks in the door.

(Sometimes it sounds like Alex's voice.)

You have dreams of tripping over bones, and you wake up with your skin itching of dried blood.

(You're not crazy.)

* * *

Once you wake up crying

(or fall asleep crying, it's hard to tell anymore)

and you feel her fingers weaving through your hair

(you know they're hers).

"Al...Alex. _Alex._" The tear-soaked name is a stone dragged from your throat, scraping and slicing on its way out. "Al...",

"I'm here." The whisper is just above you, _right there_, close enough to touch. "It's okay, Pipes."

Later, you can't figure out if you dreamed it or not.

* * *

You start to see her, at first only in peripheral, hovering there, gone by the time you turn your head.

She's in khaki prison scrubs, same as yours.

(Why? Because you're keeping her prisoner here, too?)

("Probably," Alex agrees in amusement, either in your head or out of it. "No offense, Pipes, but prison is the last fucking place I'd choose to haunt.")

Eventually, though, she starts to linger. You try to tell yourself you're just asleep, that even your dreams are now confined to this box, but either way Alex is there, leaning against the wall across from your metal mattress frame, head tilted, smiling with her lips closed.

"Do you think this is what it was like for me?" Alex says conversationally one morning/afternoon/night. "Cut off from the world, hiding in an apartment?"

You don't answer, but she acts like you did.

"Okay, okay, so I had takeout food and a decent bed and possibly even cable TV. Fair point." Alex shrugs, pretending to contemplate it. "But then again, _you_ don't have the constant fear that someone's going to show up at the door to kill you, so maybe it evens out."

"_Stop_," your voice is a rasp, more plea than command. Then, "I know you aren't real. I...I'm not crazy."

"Methinks the lady doth protest too fuckin' much," Alex replies with a smirk. "But I hope you're right, Pipes. I love you, but I'm not moving this show to Psych."

_I love you, too._

* * *

You ask her to help you remember things. You're hoping for stories about white hot beaches and sex scented hotel rooms, of sleeping against each other at airports or getting off in nightclub bathrooms. Instead she retells the time she left you inBrussels to fly somewhere with Fahri for the weekend, some last minute urgent business, and didn't come back when she was supposed to, the way she was out of touch and not where she was meant to be for four days, while you sat by the hotel phone, mouth full of fear that tasted like sulfur. She reminds you of the time you returned from a market to find her checked out of the hotel, the ten minutes you paced in blind, uncertain panic before she reappeared and tugged you from the lobby for a quick getaway. She recalls any burst of violence or chaos at rooftop parties or hotel penthouses that left you scrambling in a crowd used to making themselves disappear, any instance you couldn't find her.

* * *

"You should have called me," Alex says once. She's sitting against the door, glasses perched on top of her head, and you're stretched out on your stomach on the plastic mattress, watching her.

"_Don't_."

"Or at least _opened_ the goddamn letters."

You roll over on your back, facing the cracked, stained ceiling, and put your hands over your face, willing her away.

"I really wanted to see you."

"Stop it..."

"There were a lot of letters, Pipes. I was writing, what, two a week? Have I ever struck you as someone diligent with correspondence? It must've been damn important."

"Shut up." Your voice shatters into shards of broken glass, tears painting your palms.

"What did you think, Pipes, that I was out for _revenge_?"

"You aren't here, you aren't here, you aren't here..."

"Because you chose him?"

"Please stop it, please stop, please please please..." Whimpering, you sound about four years old.

"You know I died thinking you hated me."

(A glimpse into your mind after Chicago: _you bitch you selfish manipulative bitch I hate you I hate you I fucking hate you_)

_"SHUT UP. _ Just leave me the fuck alone, just GO AWAY!"

You're curled in a ball on the bed, sobbing so hard it makes you retch.

(Good thing there's almost nothing in your stomach.)

When you eventually pry your eyes open, Alex is gone. That's what you wanted, you're not crazy, but panic wraps its filthy hands around your neck anyway.

"Alex...?"

"Alex?"

_"Alex!"_

* * *

She stays gone for awhile.

(Not that you're sure what _awhile_ means anymore.)

You're huddled in the corner of the cell, absently dragging your split knuckles across the rough concrete wall, rubbing the scabs raw.

"Whoa, hey, hey. Jesus. Stop that." Her hands close over yours.

(You only ever get to touch her hands.)

"I know you have a dramatic streak, Pipes," she says grimly. "But this is excessive."

"You left," you accuse feebly.

"You kinda told me to, dumbass."

"Sorry. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry." You don't know how else to say it.

Her voice gentles, the edges of the words rounding into something soft. "It wasn't true, what I said."

"What wasn't?"

"That I died thinking you hate me. You never hated me." Alex unrolls a smug smile. "You gave it a decent effort, kid, but you can never pull it off. I knew you love me." The smile flickers, then fades. "_You're_ the one who always doubted _me_."

"You never...seemed like...someone that _I_ would be able to hurt."

"And yet you were always the one to walk away."

"Not this time."

"No. I guess not this time."

You close your eyes, exhausted.

"Alex?"

"Mmm?"

"I don't care if I'm crazy." Your voice is stripped bare, all pinholes and fault lines. "Just don't go anywhere."

Her fingers skim over your bloody knuckles. She nods.

"I'm here."

* * *

Later you stretch out on the cot and ask her to help you remember things, but _good_ things, this time. So she gives you stories about white hot beaches and sex scented hotel rooms, of sleeping against each other at airports or getting off in nightclub bathrooms.

She always stops at the most beautiful part.

* * *

"You'll be fine without me, you know." She sounds a little sad about it.

"Will not." A child's answer, in a child's voice: all petulance and irrational rising anger. Nothing has ever, _ever_ hurt this much, how does she not understand that?

"Just going on past history, Pipes. You were fine for eight years after us. I could have been dead then, it wouldn't have touched you."

Except those years had been like living over top of thin ice. You tread lightly, most of the time, taking careful, planned steps through the life you were supposed to be living. But it was all so easily cracked, and the instances the ground dropped out and plunged you deep into icy, turbulent memories weren't exactly infrequent. You used to get so angry when it happened, hating yourself for missing her, for craving the past like an addict tossing away sobriety chips.

Point is: you used to Google her. It was your way of clawing back on top of the ice, reminding yourself you had to type her name into a search engine to make sure she hadn't been arrested or, God forbid, killed.

Point is: you would have known. You would have cared.

It still would have broken something crucial inside you.

* * *

Sometimes it strikes you hard that the world outside the SHU still exists.

(Meaning the world where Alex is dead.)

Things you're trying not to think about:

_Your bunk upstairs being taken apart again, her letters scattering all over the prison, ending up between books or in trash cans._

Also:

_Alex sitting down every few days to rewrite the same letter, just in case that's the one you decided to open._

And most of all:

_There are no second chances this time. You don't get to do that ending over._

(Maybe you've been wrong this whole time. Maybe this is the inevitability: abrupt endings that leave you with more unfinished business than your hands can hold, endings where both of you hurt and nobody wins.)

(Maybe it's _losing_ her that's been inevitable all along.)

* * *

"I'm tired, Alex."

"So go back to sleep. Not like you have much on the agenda."

"Asshole."

"Apparently you like me that way, kid. I mean it, though. Sleep."

"It's not that kind of tired."

You are exhausted. You are scared. You've given up hope on getting the blood back in your heart.

"This isn't real, Alex. None of this in here, it's not...it's not _life_."

Alex looks at you, that shrewd gaze she gets when she's picking through a sentence, extracting the bullshit. "So are you afraid of staying here? Or are you afraid of what happens when they let you out?"

You aren't crazy. Not really.

She isn't real.

You're going to have to stop pretending eventually.

"This is so fucked up, _I'm_ so fucked up..."

"Pipes."

"I'm _tired_. This, this isn't real. I don't feel real. But when I go back..._you_ won't be real. I don't want that. Or this. I want to just...stop."

Her eyes narrow and flash: angry, lightning eyes. "_Fuck_ you, Piper."

She can see inside your head. She knows that sometimes you think about taking off your shirt, twisting into a thin tube, and stuffing it as far back in your throat as it will go. You think about ignoring all the food they stuff through the door, letting yourself waste away. You think about tearing your own skin off until the blood and muscles simply seep out.

"I saved you. Do you understand that? I convinced you to lie to keep you safe, and if you fucking_..." _She shakes her head, doesn't say it. "Then all that shit - us never talking again, you being too pissed to call me - it's all for nothing."

"It already feels like it's for nothing."

"Well thanks a goddamned bunch."

"It's not enough."

Alex looks at you. You don't spend much time looking directly at her, too afraid to notice the lack of detail, the imperfect memories. But now you meet her gaze dead on, and she just looks like herself. "You're the only person alive to miss me," she says finally. "Is that enough?"

(Just barely, it is.)

* * *

"Alex, I love you."

"Alex, I'm sorry."

(Deep down you know it doesn't count now, not like this. But you tell her anyway. Over and over and over.)

* * *

"Chapman!"

You're sleeping.

(You think you're sleeping.)

"Chapman, get up, time to go! Up, up, up, on your feet."

You open your eyes and there are two COs standing over you.

Alex is gone.

This time you don't ask questions. You're too disoriented. They snap cuffs around your wrists and guide you outside the cell, down the hall, and into sunlight.

You look back over your shoulder, like you expect her to be following.

The van door slides open and suddenly Lorna is beaming at you.

"I was hoping this was gonna be for you, Chapman."

(One last look back.)

(She isn't anywhere.)

* * *

"Nichols told me to tell you straight away that she's got all your stuff, so you don't have to worry about that. Lemme think of what all ya missed...you know we had that big storm a couple weeks ago..._ooh_, that's right, you wouldn't about what happened to Red - "

You can't hold Morello's monologue in your head. Too many words out loud, too much at once. Too obviously _real_, throwing every other conversation you've had recently into harsh contrast.

She says it's been six weeks.

Your memory is all blurred lines and fuzzy recollections, and you're having trouble grasping what was real or not. For five minutes, you almost have yourself convinced you made _everything_ about Alex up - Nicky, the newspaper, Larry's visit, all of it - but then the van pulls into camp and Lorna comes around to open the door with a sympathetic expression.

"I didn't get a chance to say, Chapman...we're all real sorry about Vause."

You hate her a little bit for shoving you back into reality.

* * *

"Alex?"

It's the first word you've said all day, and it's a risk, back in the rooms with three other inhabitants, but you have to try. No one looks over at you; no one seems to be able to look at you today, not even Nicky when you showed up at her cube to take back Alex's letters.

A little louder, then: "_Alex_."

There's no answer. You're not crazy.

(Maybe you wish you were.)

(Sanity isn't such a bad sacrifice, if only you could keep her.)


End file.
